‘No idea. There’s no sound from her bedroom, so perhaps she took the sleeping tablets I gave her.’ Patti studied Ally for a moment. ‘It just seems too much of a coincidence that all the suspects for Archie’s death were running around that spot at the time of Greg’s death, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, it does seem strange,’ Ally agreed.
‘I’ll just have fruit juice and coffee,’ Patti said, ‘and I’m not really sure if I can manage that.’ She was looking extremely agitated.
Julie sat down close to her mother. ‘I could eat some toast,’ she said.
Janey nodded. ‘Yeah, me too.’
Back in the kitchen, Ally thought that Patti’s reaction was a little odd, to say the least. She seemed more upset than Wendy, though Greg was only her brother-in-law, not her husband, whereas when her husbandhadbeen killed, Patti had recovered almost immediately.
Wendy finally appeared around nine o’clock, looking gaunt, tired and swollen-eyed. She, too, could only manage coffee, so Ally produced a couple of pots and left them to it, aware that Amir had arrived and was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her guests to finish their meagre breakfasts.
He looked up when Ally came in.
‘Before I question the family,’ Amir said, ‘I need to be absolutely certain that neither of you two were up there when that so-called fun run first began?’
‘No, we all went up there as a group around half past five or thereabouts,’ Ross said. ‘The runners were on the far side of the loch then.’
‘So what time did you come back here?’
‘Half past six probably. Wendy had hurt her foot, so she’d come back a little earlier.’
‘Hmm,’ said Amir. He turned to Ally. ‘I have forensics looking for the other half of this note that you found, which hopefully is in his pocket or somewhere. It looks very much like he may have been blackmailed.’
‘For what?’ Ally asked, askance.
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Amir said. ‘Mr Watson’s deathcouldhave been an accident, but it’s looking more and more like foul play. So, tell me what happened when you got to the castle.’
‘Well, we saw the runners coming back in, and then Wendy got worried because there was no sign of Greg.’
‘Didn’t she try phoning him?’ Amir asked.
‘Yes, she’d tried several times, but there was no reply,’ Rosssaid. ‘So we wondered if he’d forgotten his phone, or not charged it up enough, or if there was no signal.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Shortly after we found the body, I tested to see if there was a signal on my phone, and there was. Of course, he would have had a different phone, and perhaps a different network, so maybe there wasn’t a signal on his…’
‘Did anyone make any effort to see if he’d fallen by the wayside?’ Amir asked.
‘The earl sent his ghillie with the Land Rover back along the path, Wendy with him. But they didn’t see anything,’ Ross replied. ‘That was when we decided to come back here, get some torches and set off to look for him with the dogs.’
‘And what time would that have been?’
‘Probably around half past eight, I think,’ Ally replied, looking at Ross for confirmation.
He nodded. ‘Yes, about then.’
‘And at what time do you reckon you found the body?’
‘Probably about nine thirty,’ Ross replied, ‘bearing in mind it takes a good twenty minutes to get to Loch Soular, and it was dark.’
‘Forensics reckon he’d been dead for two hours before they examined him. And I understand that all the runners would have passed along that route in the early evening,’ Amir said.
‘Surely one of the runners must have seensomething?’ Ally suggested.
Amir nodded. ‘Apparently, they all set off at the same time, running round Loch Soular and then following the flags across the moor until they reached the castle. But some were fitter than others and so ran faster. By the time they got to that particular location – where Watson was found – they were probably five or ten minutes apart from each other.’
‘Enough time to attack a walker and drag him down to that rock?’ Ross asked.
‘It’s possible,’ Amir said. ‘Someone called Forbes McKinnon won, I believe.’
